


The Picture Gallery

by ArabellaTallent



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22886509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArabellaTallent/pseuds/ArabellaTallent
Summary: In the Colin Firth “Pride and Prejudice” Lizzie and the Gardeners visit Pemberley and admire the portrait of Mr Darcy in the picture gallery.I wondered whether during their search for Jamie, access to Pardloe and Lord John’s letters might have taken them on a short trip to the Lake District.
Relationships: Brianna Randall - Relationship, Dr Claire Randall, Roger Wakefield - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	The Picture Gallery

“Do you know where Helwater is?” Roger looked round from his desk towards Claire. 

“Helwater? It rings a bell. Yes, I know, it’s that rarest of things, a stately pile in the Lake District. Why?”

“I’m looking at the Duke of Pardloe’s collected letters. After we found out about his part in Jamie surviving Culloden, I thought it might be worth looking at him and his family. His letters are mercifully brief and to the point. Such a relief, given most eighteenth century letters go in for a great deal of circumlocution!”

Claire raised her eyebrows and returned to the papers she’d been trying to sort. 

“And he spends a lot of time writing to his brother at Helwater.”

“And ...?”

“And in this one he refers somewhat cryptically to a Scottish prisoner.”

“What’s his brother’s name?”

“Lord John Grey.” Claire looked up.

“That name rings a bell. Oh, where from ...?” Claire wrinkled her forehead. “Where do I know that name from?” She looked down, silent, tapping her hand against her leg. “Where do I know that name from? When are the letters dated?” 

“They start just after Culloden. The family that own Helwater, the Dunsanys, seem to have known the Greys forever. It looks as though the Duke - he wasn’t a Duke then - and his brother brought Dunsany’s son back after he was killed in the battle.”

“Many men were,” Claire said, her heart falling, wondering yet again how many she’d known had died there. “Sorry Roger, what did you say?”

“I was saying, there’s years of correspondence. The Scottish prisoner references are 1760. Then there’s a bit of a gap in the correspondence. Next thing you know, he’s writing about Grey’s marriage. It seems Grey is marrying the Dunsany’s daughter and taking on the upbringing of their orphaned grandson, his wife-to-be’s nephew.”

“Oh, who’s he?” 

“He’s referred to as Willie.” 

Brianna walked into the room. “Who’s Willie?”

“An orphaned child two hundred years ago who is about to get a mother and father,” Roger replied. And he told Brianna what he’d found.

“You know, Mamma, the Highlands are lovely, but we could take a road trip. See some more of this island you were both born on. Do you think Helwater might be worth a visit?” 

“I don’t see why not, but Britain isn’t the States. There’s no network of highways. It’ll probably take at least a day to drive there. But it’s a good idea. I’ve not been to the Lake District since before the war. Roger, you’ll come?”

“Try stopping me! It’ll be nice to have a change of scenery.”

Next day found them at the local travel agency, who booked them into a bed and breakfast in Hawick to break their journey there and back, with three nights in the middle in a Penrith hotel to give them time to visit Helwater and anywhere else they might fancy.

——

Car travel in 1960s Britain was an endurance test of underpowered cars on underdeveloped roads and Claire and Brianna were exasperated and exhausted by the time they arrived in Penrith, but the hotel was comfortable with a decent enough restaurant by British standards, which meant the food was served on hot plates.

The hotel had a selection of local attraction leaflets, and amongst them was one for Helwater, which Roger sat down to read in the bar before Claire and Brianna joined him for dinner.

“The National Trust owns it now,” he told them. “Lots of stately homes were passed to them between the wars in lieu of death duties.” Brianna and Claire composed their faces as it looked like a history of British stately homes lecture was about to be given, but Roger continued otherwise. 

“It seems the Dunsanys that Pardloe and Grey knew were the last of that family to live there. When the last Lord Dunsany died in the 1780s it passed to his grandson - I suppose it was Willie, the one in the letters. However he seems never to have returned there. A succession of agents maintained the property for Willie and his successors, until first one heir and then another were killed in the First World War and death duties forced them to give up the house, contents and land to the National Trust.”

“Apparently the house is an exceptional example of a mid eighteenth century house, untouched by any modernisation in the last two hundred years. All their efforts went to maintaining and profiting from the land.”

“Mamma, you’ll love it. It will remind you of your time at Lal ...”. She tailed off as she realised her Boston accent was carrying across the bar, attracting some attention, but more as her mother’s face crumpled in distress. 

They ate their dinner in awkward silence and went to their rooms, agreeing to be ready to leave at 9.00 am the next morning.

——

Helwater was early Georgian, set in a dip in the surrounding hills. The car park wasn’t over full, and they paid their entry fee, opting to join a guided tour. The guide was a middle aged woman, who introduced herself as she proceeded to guide them took them through formal rooms, family rooms, bedrooms and even the kitchens. 

“I’m Gillian Murray and my husband’s family has looked after Helwater since the last Lord Dunsany died nearly two hundred years ago. The legend is that Dunsany’s grandson’s stepfather wished to do a favour for a Scottish friend, and so appointed a relative of his to the position and it has passed through the family since.” 

“Wasn’t Jamie’s sister married to a Murray?”, Roger whispered to Claire. She nodded.

“Do you think ....” Roger whispered again. Claire looked at him and shrugged. “It’s a common enough Scottish name, I don’t see why it would be. Why would it be?”

Roger shrugged as well, “I just wondered, you know it’s a bit of a coincidence.”

The tour continued and while it was interesting enough, Claire couldn’t get enthused about this particular long dead family. Her feet began to ache and her head wasn’t too far behind, when the guide announced their last room would be the picture gallery. 

“This is the last Lord Dunsany,” she said pointing to a portrait. “For a reason I really don’t understand, they allowed their son to join the army. He was killed at Culloden and there was no other heir in the Dunsany family. So on Lord Dunsany’s death, the property passed through the female line to their grandson, the Earl of Ellesmere.”

“Was he a Willie, William?” asked Roger.

“Yes, he was. He was brought up here. His mother died in childbed and his father, who seemed to be completely distraught, committed suicide the same day. I’ve always thought how awful it must be to be so overcome with grief, you can’t go on.”

The three of them froze into silence, Roger and Brianna now knowing the depth of Claire’s grief all those years ago, relieved only by Brianna’s birth, while Claire reached for Brianna’s hand, squeezing it for comfort, or perhaps to reassure that she was alright now, the loss of Jamie no longer paralysed her, but inwardly Claire went back to those days in the spring of 1948 when she would cheerfully have curled up, gone to sleep and been thankful to have never woken again.

As they proceeded along the gallery, the guide pointed out other portraits.

“This is Lady Dunsany, with her two daughters, the Honourable Geneva, William’s mother, and the Honourable Isabel. She became William’s de facto mother. This next one is Lord John Grey, who married Isabel.”

“Good lord!” Shocked out of her usual expletive, Claire stared at the painting. A handsome, aristocratic-looking man, wigless, but with his fair hair hair pulled back in the style of the mid eighteenth century, looked back at them, a slight smile on his lips. “Carryarrick!” Brianna and Roger looked at her in astonishment. 

“What is Carryarrick?” whispered Brianna. Claire raised her eyebrows and waved her hands, dismissing the query. “Later,” she mouthed, and hurried them along the gallery to catch up with the guide.

“ ... and this is our prized piece. We’re lucky to have it. We think Lady Dunsany might have commissioned him to paint some of their horses while he still lived in York, when she went there with her daughters to visit the Assembly Rooms in the mid 1750s, before Geneva married the Earl of Ellesmere, but this painting is early 1760s and by that time Stubbs was living in London. The Dunsany family seem to have spent a great deal of their money on their horses. Their stables were famous and a source of income to them. You find them mentioned in a lot of contemporary correspondence. There seems to have been a groom around 1760 who was particularly knowledgeable and greatly enhanced the value of their stables, even starting the breeding stables for racehorses.”

The three of them gazed up at the painting above the fireplace. It was a painting of two horses with their grooms. Both grooms were holding the reins of their individual horse, but one horse had a small boy perched on top of it, laughing out of the picture down the centuries. 

“That’s William, Lord Ellesmere, as a child. You’ll see he’s about five or six, as he’s been breeched. You’ll also see the groom has the horse on a tight rein, because that child really ought not be on a full grown horse, no matter how well trained or docile. What we do know from his stepfather’s surviving letters is William was very self-willed, very stubborn and he adored horses.”

“It seems as a small child he took to one of the grooms, possibly the one who enhanced the value of the stables, and he taught William to ride and to care for horses. You’ll know a gentleman of good breeding in the eighteenth century prided himself at being able to do anything his groom could do. A good groom should have been a highly valued member of the household, nearly as important to a gentleman as his valet, perhaps more important to gentlemen to whom horses meant more than the cut of his coat!” 

They looked up at the painting. A Stubbs. They’d been overlooked for years, but recently they had been reappraised and some were worth a small fortune. Roger stared at the child’s face, and looked at Brianna, clutching at an elusive familiarity he thought he could see in the boy’s face, which was losing the roundness of babyhood, its adult bone structure beginning to show through. But Claire was looking at the groom. Stubbs painted horses, people in his painting were less well portrayed. He’d done the child with some care, after all he was the grandson of the commissioning family, but there had been something in the groom which had piqued his interest. He’d taken time to show a tall, straight backed man in early middle age, with hair the colour of autumn leaves, strongly featured, unforgettable once seen. His personality, even at this distance of time and space, discernible. A man who would do whatever job he was given, no matter how demeaning, to the best of his ability, and he was watching this child keenly, ensuring his safety. But Claire hadn’t yet taken that in. She was looking up, unable to tear her gaze away from the face of this one figure in the landscape, transfixed, and as tears gathered in her eyes, she breathed out the one word, “Jamie ...” 

END

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve re-read this and made a few changes to the text, I hope making the language a bit more elegant. An object lesson in not rushing to write and post something at midnight.
> 
> If you’re not familiar with the work of George Stubbs, google (image) Whistlejacket.
> 
> Thank you to those who have left comments and kudos. This is only the second piece of writing I’ve done since I left school, the other is another piece on this site. I prefer not to say when I left school!


End file.
